1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus for printing an image on a medium, for example, a print sheet or the like, and particularly to an image forming apparatus having an ink jet recording head and an image forming method.
2. Description of the Related Art
As an image forming apparatus of this type, an apparatus has been known that has a carrier path for carrying a sheet into the apparatus body and that ejects ink from a recording head to the sheet carried by this carrier path and thereby forms an image thereon, as disclosed in JP-A-2006-219235, for example.
Normally, a sheet guide (medium guide) faces the recording head at a distance, and ink is ejected to a sheet guided along this sheet guide.
Meanwhile, in the printing operation, ink mist is generated around the recording head and the sheet guide is particularly stained with this ink mist. If the sheet guide is stained with the ink mist, when guiding the following sheets, the sheets might be stained.
Thus, traditionally, the sheet guide is periodically cleaned.
However, traditionally, since the sheet guide is provided fixedly in the apparatus body, when cleaning the sheet guide, a cleaning tool must be inserted into the apparatus body and the work must be done in the narrow space. Therefore, there are problems of poor operability and difficulty in confirming the cleaning effect.
As another means for cleaning the sheet guide, a technique of inserting a cleaning paper (for example, blank paper) into the sheet guide and eliminating the strain on the sheet guide with this paper has been carried out.
However, this case is uneconomical because paper is wasted.